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iteply of Hon. William D. Kelley to George 
Northrop) Esq. 



IN THE 1IALL OF THE SPRING GARDEN INSTITUTE FRIDAY EVENING 
SEPTEMBER 23, 1864. 



rnoNOGRArmc report by d. wolfe brown. 

FeUowMntizens. — I thank you for the good order you have preserved. If this discussion 

can be carried through, a great advance will have been made in. I think 1 may say. our civili- 
zation. It' we can inaugurate a system by which the people of both, or of all parties, if there 
should be more than two in the canvass, shall come together and hear their representatives 
discuss the questions, the principles and the measures involved, a great improvement in our 
political machinery will certainly have been made ; and I hope that every friend of mine will 
K« "s silent throughout the discussion as you have been during the Bpeech you have heard, 
t quite sure that those who differ from me in opinion will accord to me the same respect- 
reatmcut with which the suggestions of their representative have been received by my 
Is. 

igree, as does every member of the Administration party, with the first two propositions 
down by my distinguished competitor. I am here at his requesl ; 1 will nol say challenged 
Lm, but invited, to meet you and discuss the issues of the day with him. 1 shall endeavor 
i so fearlessly and in the spirit of a patriot, striving only to promote the welfare of my 
try and yours, the home or our prosperity. 

v- friend's first proposition is that the "Constitution of the United States, within its limi- 
03, is the supreme law of the land, and the only bond of the Union of the States." As ! 
said, I accept this proposition. It governs the head of the Administration that 1 su- 
it controls the conduct of the members of the party to which I belong. 1 wish you. 
ver, to mark a single phrase, not dropped, but reiterated, and dwelt upon by my com- 
ir, which is utterly inconsistent with this, his leading proposition. I refer to the phrase 
reign States.'" Sovereignty is supremacy. That which is sovereign is supreme ; that 
is sovereign governs and controls all within the sphere id' its jurisdiction. 'The Consti- 
Of that Nation known as the United States was. from the hour it went into effect, the 
>nc law of our whole land, and is now its supreme law, and the great issue testing by the 
iean people on the battle-field to-day is, whether that Constitution shall be maintained 
! supreme law of the land, or whether it shall be trampled under foot, and each State 
itution be recognized as the supreme law of whatever territory may lie within the limits 
it State; the question is whether we have a country, and a Constitution which is the 
me law of that country, or whether the < 'onstitution of the I'nited States is idle word.-, 
he supreme law of the land is to be found in conflicting instruments called the Constitu- 
of thirty-five " Sovereign States." Either the Constitution of the United states is 
•eign, or if is waste paper; and if it is sovereign, then there can be no ••Sovereign States" 
in the limits of the I'nited States. 
...y friend's next proposition was (and 1 accept it, as every school-boy must |, " that the onh 

mode by which the Constitution can be altered or amended' is prescribed by that instrument 
itself." This proposition expresses one of the cardinal doctrines of the party 1 have the bonoi 
to represent in tins discussion. It is part of the faith of every member, because it is written 
legibly as type or the human hand can write it in the language of the Constitution. 

Now, my fcllow-citi/.ens, a- my competitor and I agree, and a- you all agree, that the 

Constitution is the supreme law of the land, let Q8 a-k. what is the extent of lh.it land '.' On 

the inauguration of James Buchanan's administration, it consisted of certain States and terri- 
tories. Among the States were South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama. Mississippi, Louisiana, 
Florida, ami Texas. Among the States were also Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, 

Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia; ami then' was the District Of Columbia. 
These States and that District, in conjunction with the Northern State- and our broad terri- 
tories, made tin' land of which that Constitution was the supremo law. Yet during the ad- 
ministration ol dames Buchanan, there was an attempt made to rob that Constitution of its 
supremacy over all the State- 1 have named and the District of Columbia, the capital of the 
country. On the eighth id' February, 1861, and 1 wish you to bear in mind that Abraham 
Lincoln did not become President till the fourth of March. 1861, in utter disregard of the 



E4^ 

' 'i & I -KQ , I > 
Constitution of tlic United States, a Confederacy, consisting of South Carolina, Georgia, 
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, was organized in the city of Mont- 
gomery, in the State of Alabama; under articles known as the Constitution of the Confede- 
rate States of America; and on the next day those who had organized it proceeded to elect 
Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi. President of that Confederacy, and A. H. Stephens, of Georgia, 
Vice-President. My distinguished friend has put a list of questions to me, which I shall 
answer as I proceed. But I have to ask him to point me to the clause in the Constitution 
which authorizes the amendment which proposes thus to restrict its supremacy to less than 
half our country. Where in the scope of that instrument — by which one of its articles — by 
what clause of that article — were those men authorized so to amend our Constitution that it 
should not cover any one of the eight States embraced in the Confederacy? But again in a 
few days there appeared in council with the men who organized that Confederacy represent- 
atives from Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri. North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, and 
they proposed to so further amend the supreme law of our country, that it should be no law 
at all over nearly a million of square miles of that country ; and I again ask the gentlemen to 
point me under his two first propositions, to the provision of the Constitution under which 
those important amendments were made. 

Whose country was it that these felonious conspirators undertook thus summarily to dis- 
pose of? Our ancestors acquired part of it by the right of settlement. They came pilgrims 
to an inhospitable coast. They made their homes among the savage Indians. They endured 
the tempest-tossing of the Atlantic in the little barks, called ships at that day, and they dotted 
the hard and rock-bound coast of that ocean from Plymouth Rock to Oglethorpe's community 
in Georgia. They and their posterity, and others like themselves, escaping from the despot- 
isms of Europe, from poverty and want, came and settled this country. In the course of 
years they reduced the wilderness, they built the village, the town, the city ; they reared the 
school-house, the church, the college ; they made roads into the wilderness and followed them 
by settlements. They extended their boundaries and became a great people. When the 
mother-country undertook to control them improperly, they went to war in vindication of 
their rights, and during eight long years they sanctified that country to us by pouring out 
their taxes, their blood, their lives, alike upon the hills of hated New England and the plains 
of pestilent South Carolina. The sons of New England died everywhere in that war; and 
here on the soil of our own great State the men of the South and of New England fought 
together upon common territory belonging specially to neither. After eight years of war, 
and taxes, and death, liberty was achieved, and a Constitution framed, deliberately framed, 
in our own city ; it was submitted to the people of the States, and one after another of those 
States adopted it ; the Southern States, at least Georgia and South Carolina, coming in among 
the latest. It was, however, adopted by the people of all the States, and from that day it 
remained the supreme law of those States and all the territory belonging to them, and all the 
territory they might acquire. Subsequently to that, it was found that Spain held a province 
that might be dangerous to our peace. The American people— not the people of the Southern 
States— still less the people of that province or of the adjoining States alone, but the Ameri- 
can people, acting by the United States Government, with money paid out of the common 
treasure, bought Florida from Spain. The Emperor Napoleon held another territory, that 
which in part bounded the Gulf, and held the key to the great arterial river of our 
country, the Mississippi. While a foreign nation held the mouth of that river, the resources 
of the Northwest might at any time be crippled. That river was the outlet to the sea 
for the great and rapidly expanding Southwest. Through that river and over the Gulf of 
Mexico the products of the Mississippi valley and of the Northwest were to find their way 
to market; and over that river the articles imported into that extended region were to come; 
for in those days the railroad system was unknown. Thus, unless the United States pos- 
sessed the full control of the outlet to the Mississippi the great Northwest might be shut 
out from the commercial world. Its produce could not be waggoned thousands of miles and 
over the Alleghany Mountains to the sea coast. Therefore the United States Government 
bought Louisiana from France as it seventeen years afterward bought Florida from Spain — 
the people of New England, Pennsylvania. New York, and every other Northern State 
paying their proportion for the purchase as well as those of South Carolina and Virginia. It 
was, you perceive, our property, my fellow-citizens, that those conspirators thus attempted to 
transfer to a foreign government. We, or our ancestors, bought it, our government being 
the agent in the purchase. 

Again : there lay contiguous to Louisiana an empire equal to six of the largest States of 
the Union. It bounded the gulf whose freedom is so essential to the development of our 
country from the Sabine to the Del Norte. It had been wrested from a neighboring govern- 
ment, Mexico, by our own people, who had gone there and settled, and had come to be known 
as the State of Texas. We admitted that State into the Union, and that act led to war with 
Mexico. So that, though we had paid for it in money, by the assumption and extinguishment 
of its enormous debt, we paid for it again in the blood of our sons and brothers, shed on the 
fields of Mexico. The expenses of the Mexican war in blood and treasure were but part of 
the price the people of the North paid for Texas. 



3 

Whether the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of those States, or it is 
not, is the question to be settled by our armies or by us at the coii.l. , "leclion. If it is not, 
why is it not ? If it is not, when and how did it cease to be ? 

What provision dees the Constitution make for its own amendment? It provides that Con- 
gress may, by a two-third vote of each Bouse, propose any amendment which shall be sub- 
mitted to the States, and when the Legislatures of three-fourths of the Stales. Bhall have 
adopted it, or when conventions of those States, having Keen called for thai purpose, shall, to 
the number of three-fourths of the whole number of States, have adopted it, then and then 
only the amendment shall become part of the Constitution. I do not think that I have Blept 
'as long as old Rip Van Winkle did, and therefore I du not believe that the Constitution has 
been so amended as to relieve the so-called Confederate States from its supreme jurisdiction. 
I certainly have never heard that Congress, by a two-thirds vote, proposed an amendment 
restricting the action of the Constitution to the north side of the Susquehanna aud Ohio 
Rivers. 

I do not remember that such an amendment to the Constitution was ever submitted .to the 
Legislature of Pennsylvania and adopted by it. If I have slept through SO important an era 
of our history I pray some of you to tell me so. Does any man here know of the Constitution 
having been so amended as to allow all the States south of Pennsylvania. Ohio, Indiana, Illi- 
nois, and Iowa, to pass from under it? If no man here knows it. and if my distinguished 
antagonist cannot tell us when it happened, 1 take it for granted that it never happened, and 
that the Constitution of the United States is still the supreme law of our whole country; 
and that when James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln, in the same phraseology, before the 
same God and people, swore to "preserve, protect, and defend" it. they bound themselves 
by oath to maintain its supremacy over every acre of our country. Am 1 wrong? 1 think not. 

I did not agree that 1 would answer every metaphysical question which my friend might 
put to me. I agreed to meet turn aud to discuss the principles and measures of our parties 
respectively, and apply those principles to the great issues of the day; but I think that if 1 
demonstrate that our party is standing by the Constitution, the unity, and the flag of the 
country, and that the party which he represents has deliberately assented to the dismember- 
ment of the country, 1 shall effectually answer all his questions. Each one, however, Bhall 
receive attention as the discussion progresses. 

In 1832 there was a Democratic Administration presiding over the country. The dream of 
a Southern empire influenced leading minds of the South at that tinre. For. gentlemen, this 
rebellion, the conspiracy which is now attempting to dismember our country and overturn its 
Constitution, has engaged the attention of two generations. It engaged the best years of 
the later life of John C. Calhoun and his compeers in South Carolina, and some other of the 
Southern States. In 1832 South Carolina- determined to show that that State was " sovereign," 
and passed an ordinance by which she undertook to nullify and set at nau-ht within her 
limits a law of Congress known as a Revenue Law. She assembled what she called a 
"sovereign convention." aud that convention passed an ordinance of nullification. Word was 
brought to the then Democratic President. Andrew Jackson, that the ordinance of nullifica- 
tion had been passed. What did that distinguished Democrat do? Did he send into Con- 
gress a message saying that he had no right to coerce a Stale ? Did he send into Congress a 
message saying that the Constitution of the United States was not ample For its own protec- 
tion ? James Buchanan did thus at a later day, but Andrew Jackson did quite otherwise. lie 

issued a proclamation to the people of the State, reminding them of their dutj to the < 
tution, holding up before them the greatness of their country and its resources — showing how 
Heaven had enriched it; pointing them to the magnificenl growth of the country under 

republican institutions; telling them that the people had elected him President, and that on 
the inauguration day he had sworn to preserve, protect, and defend tin- Constitution and 
enforce the laws of the United States, and that that oath should lie regarded, the Constitution 
defended, and the laws enforced. 

General Winfield Scott was then thirty-two years younger than he is now ; and President 

Jackson ordered him to the city of Charleston will: the army of the United Stales. 11" 
ordered all the forts in front of the city of Charleston to be reinforced, and to be put under arma- 
ment, lie ordered the Secretary of the Navy to disengage all the available vessels, and lay them 
along the coast, so that, if South Carolina should undertake to put its foot on the Constitution 

he should blow her " sovereign" lirains out ! That is what Andrew Jackson did. when the 

people of South Carolina undertook to show their "sovereignty" by merely trampling on a 
law. Now they do it by tearing the Constitution into fragments, appropriating our country 

to their own exclusive use, with. nit even proposing to refund us the no-iies we have expended 

in its purchase and improvement. 

l.ei as briefly contemplate some of the results of their action. 

The Constitution of the United Stales provides thai '■the citizens of each State shall be 
entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." 1 am a Dluladel- 

?hian. 1 was born here; schooled here; I learned my trade here. As 1 approached manhood 
went to Massachusetts. At the end of one year 1 was. under the Constitution o( the United 
States, a citizen of .Massachusetts, aud as such took part in the Presidential election. Yoilj 



my fellow-citizens, were born, perhaps, in New England, or in a Southern State, and under the 
Constitution of the United States are a citizen of Pennsylvania, and at the coming election 
may vote as a citizen. We all have the right, under the Constitution, to settle in Maryland, 
in Virginia— ay, even in South Carolina, if it be to our taste. 

The Constitution, as we have seen, gives each and every one of u»s that is a citizen of any 
State the privileges and immunities of citizenship in Texas, and in every State lying between 
her and Pennsylvania. Our money and our blood bought three of them; atd as you know 
our money has built fortifications and arsenals and customhouses and post-offices and marine 
hospitals, and all other national establishments throughout those States. Will my distin- 
guished competitor, I again ask, tell us when and where and how the Constitution, in accord- 
ance with its own provisions, was so modified that we are no longer entitled to citizenship in 
those States, and that the custom-houses, and forts, and arsenals, &c, that we paid for, belong 
to a foreign people and government? Is South Carolina part of our country ? Abraham 
Lincoln thinks it is, and so do yon. Have you never heard of the healthful qualities- of the 
climate of Florida? You have a sick daughter — a fair girl sinking into the consumption; 
the disease is developing in her tender system; the doctors order her to a more genial climate. 
You say that you will take her to Florida, where the temperature seldom varies ten degrees, 
and where, it is said, the atmosphere is an almost sovereign balm for incipient consumption. It 
is your right to take her there ; and I leave it to ray distinguished competitor to show by what 
clause of the Constitution Jefferson Davis and his armies deny you the exercise of that right. 

You, young mechanic, who have no capital but your skill and health — who are tired of 
labor in the contracted workshop and of life in the compact city, you dream of owning a herd 
of cattle upon a broad prairie. Under the Constitution of the United States and the beneficent 
legislation of the first "Lincoln Congress" you have a right to go to Texas, or any othei* 
State in which there arc public lands, and, under the Homestead law, settle on one hundred 
and twenty acres, if you have a wile, or if you are a single man, on eighty acres of the best 
land you can find. If you have children, the law gives you one hundred and twenty acres for 
yourself and wife, and ten for each of your children. That land in Texas or any other State 
is yours; all you have to do is to go and settle upon it. Ay, say you, "but Jefferson Davis 
won't let me !" That is so; and my patriotic competitor says that President Lincoln is vio- 
lating the Constitution by trying to drive Jeff's soldiers out of your way, that you may go and 
"walk in glory behind the plough" on your own broad acres. 

Where is the power, my laboring friend, to divest your personal interest in the public lands 
under the Homestead Law? AVhere is the power to rob us, American citizens, of the glory 
bur ancestors achieved on Eutaw's field and Camden's plain ? Where is the power to rob us 
of the treasure w T e invested when we acquired Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, and involved 
ourselves in the Mexican war? 

" Ah ! but," says my friend, " this is your doings, you Abolitionists and Republicans." Let 
us see how that is. I ask you, my Democratic townsmen, who was President on the eighth of 
February, 1861, when the Southern Confederacy was organized? Who was President on the 
twenty-first of December, 1860, when South Carolina seceded? Was not James Buchanan? 
Had he not for his Cabinet Howell Cobb, of Georgia, and John B. Floyd, of Virginia, and 
Isaac Toucey, of Connecticut, and Jeremiah S. Black, of Pennsylvania, and Jacob Thomp- 
son, of Mississippi, and were not they and their associates all Democrats? Was not what 
they did the doings of the Democratic party? And did not the party turn out of its ranks 
every man who did not stand up for and sanction what the Buchanan administration did ? 

On the 21st of December, 18G0, South Carolina passed her ordinance of secession ; but she 
did not do it until James Buchanan, President of the United States, and the acknowledged 
head of the Democratic party, had announced to the Southern people his belief in their right 
to secede, and had told every loyal, Union-loving man in the Southern States that, in the event 
of his State's seceding, if he dared to hold on to the Union, he must expect no protection 
from the National Government, but would be handed over to the tender mercies of his 
State or any confederacy that might be built upon the ruins of our Union ; and in order to 
strengthen this warning, had coupled with his message the opinion of his Attorney-General, 
Jeremiah S. Black, sustaining it. That message was sent to Congress three months before 
Abraham Lincoln became President of the United States. 

James Buchanan and the Democratic party so understood the Constitution. I do not blame 
them. I do not blame the Millerite for his faith, though he does not go up at the expected 
time, but still believes that he will go up some time. I do not blame the Mormon, if he is 
honest in his faith, though I censure his practices. I do not blame these leaders of the Demo- 
cratic party for their faith ; they honestly believe that the Constitution of the United States 
is a rope of sand, and that whenever a State wants to go out of the Union, she can. That 
is their faith ; they have a right to it ; but I am not willing to let them dissolve the Union 
to gratify their vagaries. What I complain of is, that while holding to these baleful 
tenets, they humbug masses of their party by uttering delusive phrases about maintaining 
and defending the Union and the Constitution. If the leaders of the Northern Democracy 
had not believed the doctrines announced by Mr. Buchanan, they would have abandoned him 
and his Administration when he sent in his message of the 4th* of December, 1860 ; but, on 



the contrary, those members of the party who dissented from his new-found faith were kicked 
out Forney, and others able and brilliant as he, among the number. 

Let me demonstrate the truth of my assertion by reading from the message of James Bu- 
chanan, communicated to Congress on the 4th of December, L860: — 

"The question, fairly stated, is: Has the Constitution delegated to Congress the power to 
coerce into submission a State which is attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn, 
from the Confederacy? If answered in the affirmative, it must be on the principle that the 
power has been conferred upon Congress to declare and make war againsl a State. Alter 
much serious reflection, 1 have arrived at the conclusion thai no such power has been dele- 
gated to .Congress, or to any other department of the Federal Government. It is manifest, 
upon an inspection of the Constitution, that, this is not among the specific and enumerated 
powers granted to Congress; and it is equally apparent that its exercise is not necessary and 
proper i'or carrying- into execution any one of these powers," 

Now, that either was or was not, the doctrine of the Democratic party as an organization. 
Let us test it. Is not James Buchanan in full faith and communion with the Democratic party 
to-day?, Does not he support the Chicago platform and nominees? And have not the party 
expelled from its ranks every man who dissented from the doctrines and measures of Buchanan 
and his Administration'? 

Accompanying that message of James Buchanan was the opinion of Judge Black, his 
Attorney-General, in which that eminent friend of Pendleton and McClellaii said: "If it be 
true that war cannot be declared, nor a system of general hostilities carried on by the central 
Government against a State, then it seems to follow that an attempt to do so would lie ipso 
facto an expulsion of such State from the Union. Being treated as an alien and an enemy, 
she would be compelled to act accordingly. And if Gongress shall break up the present 
Union by unconstitutionally putting strife and enmity and armed hostility between different 
sections of the country, instead of the -domestic tranquillity' which the Constitution was 
meant to insure, will not all the States lie absolved from their Federal obligations? Is any 
portion of the people bouud to contribute their money or their blood to carry on a contest 
like that?" 

Now, I say that James Buchanan and Jeremiah S. Black, and the Democratic party of the 
North, that sustained them, in the promulgation and support of the message and opinion from 
which I make these extracts, served notice on the Union men of Virginia* and Tennessee, and 
Missouri, and all the Southern States, to this effect: " if the majority of the people of your 
respective States want to secede,. we will let them; and if you resist them and try to keep 
the State in the Union, you do so at your peril, for there is no power in the Constitution to 
prevent secession, or under which we can or will protect you." My Democratic friends, is 
not that true? Did they not thus invite the dismemberment of your country? Did they net 
impel and encourage the Southern conspirators to rob you of more than half of your national 
birthright? 

Is the Constitution the supreme law? Did Gen. Jackson understand the doctrines of the 
Democratic party when he said. "The Union must and shall be preserved"? If hi' did. 
Abraham Lincoln is bound to preserve the Union, and every honest Democral should sustain 
him in the effort, for every inch of that Union is our country, and over all the Constitution 
which he has sworn to maintain and defend is the supreme law. The truth is. my fellow- 
citizens, that since 1847 the Democratic party has abandoned its old faith. I belonged to 
that party. I grew to manhood in it. and devoted the best years of my life to its intl 
and on the very day when 1 ran as an independent candidate for Judge 1 voted for William 
Bigler and the whole Democratic ticket except that for the judiciary. In 1852 ! worked and 
voted for the election of Tierce and King. It was not till 1 discovered that the doctrine of 

Calhoun, which Jackson supposed he had crushed, had got control of tin' party, that I aban- 
doned it and went forth to resisl its greal power for evil. 

1 have, however, only shown you what the doctrines of that party were Now lei me .-how 
you the practical effects of those doctrines, how. by withholding from the Union people of 
the South the support of the Government, the Democratic party forced the contemplated 
separation of our country. When the eighl States met to organize a Confederate Govern- 
meut, they represented 2,656,948 white people, and 2,312,046 slaves. The Southern States 
that did not go with them at that time contained 5,633,005 white people and 1,638,29*7 slaves. 
So that of the people, who composed that Confederacy, black and white, bond ami free, there 

were 4,968,994, while of those who then refused to go into it there were 7,271,302. And 

had James Buchanan and the Democratic party adhered to the old Jacksonian Demi 

doctrine, and announced that the Union must lie preserved, that the Constitution was the 
supreme law of the land — had President Buchanan ordered General Scott, old as he was. to 
concentrate the army in the North, and to reinforce Sumter and all other forts on the Southern 
COast, and ordered the Secretary of the Navy to concentrate the Navy on our coast Baid to 

the L'nion men of the South, as Jackson did in his proclamation, stand true to your country, 
its Constitution and its dag, and we will sustain you. no Mate would have seceded no foreign 
Confederacy would have been reared upon our soil- no war would have deluged it with blood. 
That was the time to prevent war. This was the way to prevent it. But the new faith of 



these new leaders of the party would not permit them to act thus. What did they do ? South 
Carolina, as I have said, seceded on the 21st of December, 1860. When the news was carried 
to Mr. Buchanan, did he, as old Jackson did. straighten himself up, point to the heavens, and 
swear by the Eternal that the Union should be preserved ? No; take up the files of your 
Democratic newspapers and read, and you will find that he sat in the executive chamber like 
an old woman crying. Every day the telegraph brought us intelligence of the new floods of 
tears that the Democratic president was shedding. He assumed the attitude and aspect of 
a dejected old woman, and cried : " Oh, dear me ! you ought not to do it ; but oh, dear me ! 
I have not the power to prevent or to punish you." So the work of the attempt to sever 
the grandest country God ever gave to man, and to abolish that miracle of modern civiliza- 
tion, the Constitution of the United States, went on. 

But more than this, that Democratic Administration, with the sanction of the party that 
brought it into power and sustains the Chicago platform and nominees, armed the rebels and 
gave them a navy. John B. Floyd, of Virginia, was Secretary of War, and had charge of 
our arsenals and our armories. He sent into the seceding States from every Northern 
arsenal and armory every available gun, pistol, cannon, sword, or set of uniform. Don't you 
remember, my friends, that the last heavy guns that were being shipped were stopped by the 
patriotic citizens of Pittsburg, among them the venerable Judge Wilkins — that distinguished 
Democrat, whose career in the United States Senate still reflects lustre upon our State — that 
distinguished statesman, now tottering toward the grave, presided over the meetings of citizens 
that stopped those cannon. They were law-abiding citizens of Pennsylvania, and they tele- 
graphed to the President, saying that they had arrested certain heavy guns, in transitu, 
because they believed they were being sent to a Confederacy that was being established upon 
our own soil in violation of our Constitution, and they were determined that those guns 
should not go for any such purpose. What did Messrs. Buchanan and Floyd, speaking for 
the Democratic administration, reply? They replied that the guns in question were on their 
way, under the orders of the Secretary of War, to a new fortification on Ship Island. Now, 
let me ask whether there is a soldier here who has been to Ship Island ? If there is. I wish 
him to say so, for I want him to make a brief part of my speech. There is no fortification 
on Ship Island ; there was no fortification on Ship Island ; there was no contract for a forti- 
fication on Ship Island ; there had never been an order issued to build a fortification on Ship 
Island. The story was a lie. It was one of the nefarious practices by which the people of 
the eighteen States of the North were stripped of arms and the rebels of the South furnished 
with the means to overawe and intimidate the Union men of the Southern and Border States, 
and ultimately make war on us. 

What did your Secretary of the Navy do — your Democratic Secretary of the Navy? He 
is a Northern man; he is a son of despised New England — the " laud of Abolitionists !" 

And here, by the way, I must make a brief digression; I must, as a Pennsylvanian, protest 
against my friend robbing Pennsylvania of the brightest jewel in her coronet and throwing it 
at the feet of New England. 

The doctrine of man's absolute right to wages for work did not spring from New England; 
I claim it as a great Pennsylvania truth. While yet the Revolutionary war was pending — 
on the 1st of March, 17-80, three years before the declaration of peace — the Legislature of 
Pennsylvania passed an act by which slavery was "extinguished and forever abolished" 
within the limits of the Commonwealth. It was done in grateful recognition of God's good- 
ness in securing the near prospect of speedy freedom to all the people of that State. And 
in the literature of America, there is no prouder or grander chapter than the preamble to 
that law which secures to every laboring man, woman, and child within the limits of our own 
dear Pennsylvania, wages for their work— which secures to all the people of the State the 
rite of marriage, and raised from their degradation, thousands of women who were com- 
pelled to live in prostitution that their wealthy owners might sell their children like sheep at 
the shambles. To Pennsylvania, our own State, sir, belongs the honor of establishing, by 
special law, human freedom, and the right of the laboring man to his wages ; and I will 
not, without an earnest protest, allow any man to deprive my ancestors of their share in so 
great an honor. But to resume : What did your Secretary of the Navy — a son of despised 
New England — do? Our navy consisted of 69 vessels, manned by 7000 men, exclusive of 
officers and marines. It carried 250 guns of different calibre. What did your Secretary of 
the Navy do with them — vessels, men, guns and all ? Knowing that a foreign government 
was organizing within the limits of our country; knowing that John B. Floyd avowed his 
allegiance to it and had armed it ; knowing that he had handed over your army to it as pris- 
oners (for under Twiggs he surrendered one half, and under Canby he compelled the surrender 
of nearly the other half, so that before Abraham Lincoln became President, the Confederacy 
had some eight, ten, or twelve thousand prisoners, whom they paroled) what, I ask, under these 
circumstances, did this Democratic Secretary of the Navy do to maintain the Constitution 
and unity of our country? Did he send the largest vessels of the navy into the Delaware or 
the Hudson, or to Charlestowu, Mass., or to Kittery and Portsmouth, upon the confines of 
the two States of Maine and New Hampshire? Oh, no, my fellow citizens: he was in the 
conspiracy to divide and dishonor your country. He was of the cabinet that agreed to James 



Buchanan's message of December, I860, announcing to the Union men of the Sonth thai the 
government would Dot protect them. Under his direction, the twenty seven largesl vessels of 
our navy were dismantled or laid up in ordinary in Southern yards, within the limits of the 
proposed Confederacy. Thus did James Buchanan and his Democratic cabinet, their conduct 
Vicing approved by the Democratic party, hand over our patrimony and the means of defend- 
ing it, to avowed conspirators who were forming a foreign government on "\\r Boil. But what 
did the Democratic Secretary of the Navy do with the rest of our vessels? Did he send 
them into our Northern yards ? No ; he sent them to the coast of A frica : to the far Pacific ; 
to the Mediterranean; to the Indian ocean; in a word, to the most distanl stations to which 
armed vessels had ever borne the flag of our country ; so that, when Abraham Lincoln became 
President, he had at his immediate command in the yards of the North, but the four smallest 
vessels of our navy, manned by '2f>U out of the 7,0U0 men, and carrying less than 25 out of 
the more than 250 guns. 

The Constitution of the United Spates is the supreme law of the land: bul you must not 
enforce it, for fear you offend the people of the South ! That is the doctrine of the Peace 
Democracy. The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land : but, 
■but, but, you must not enforce it. If you will only coax the men of the Southern Con- 
federacy abjectly enough, they will come" back to the Union without this war! At hast wc 
think they will, and we are pretty sure they will, if you will go for the "Union as it was," 
without New England. General Jackson did not talk that way— he said: "The Constitution 
is the supreme law of the land; and if you attempt to trample upon it, I will blow you into 
eternity." Jackson's is the Lincoln doctrine of to-day. We mean to maintain the supremacy 
of the Constitution; and when the war is over, if it needs amendment, we will do what the 
Republican party proposed to do before this war began. My friend forgets that, to appease 
these people whom the Democratic party of the North were hissing on to war — whom the 
Democratic party were arming and providing with a navy — we united in a resolution to 
amend the Constitution, so that by no future amendment could slavery ever possibly be 
interfered with by the people of the North. That proposition passed both houses of Congress, 
many Republicans in both houses voting for it. It passed the Senate by 24 to 12 and the 
House by 133 to 65, largely more than the requisite two-thirds vote, and by the -generous 
support of the Republican party. 1 claim to belong to the Abolition section of the Repub- 
lican party. I do not believe that any man has so good a right to a babe as the woman who 
carried it for nine months, and suffered the pangs of maternity in giving it birth. 1 believe 
that every man, whether his father under the barbarous laws of the Northern States might sell 
him on the auction block or not, is entitled to wages for all the work lie does. 1 do not 
believe that one man has a right to lie lord and master, and hold others as his slaves. And 
I despise the system under which a heartless and sensual aristocracy have been in the habit 
of selling their daughters into whoredom and their sons to lives of unrequited toil. In so far. 
I am what they call an abolitionized Republican; and many members of the wing of the 
party to which I belong, in the hope of securing peace, sustained the proffered amendment, 
whereby the Constitution would have been peaceably amended, and it would have been made 
impossible through all time, for the people of theNorth to free a slave. 

My friend's third proposition is that " Whenever any department of Government exercises 
any power beyond or antagonistic to the Constitution, it is revolution." 

This is certainly novel, and rather startling doctrine. It comes from the modern school of 
Democrats. There used to be great discussions about the Constitution between I lenry Clay and 
Dauiel Webster on the one hand, and certain Democrats of the Calhoun school on the ether; 
and in those good old days, the theory was that if Congress or any administration Bhould at 
any time adopt an unconstitutional measure, the people would rally in their might at the next 
election and turnout of office those who had made the mistake or perpetrated the wrong; 
and that in the meantime those who thought the act unconstitutional ami were injured by it 
should raise the question before the Supreme Court of the United States and have it decided. 
Now sir, what is the Supreme Court of the United Slates lor. and why have we elections re- 
curring at such short intervals if the object be imi t . » guard against any enduring reason for 
rebellion or revolution'.'' The object in limiting the Presidential term to four years and the 
Congressional to two was that, if anybody who might gel into power should behave badly, we 
might have an early opportunity to turn him out. The Supreme Court was provided, 50 that 
if Congress should pass aii unconstitutional law. ami the President approve it. that tribunal 
might declare it unconstitutional and set it aside. So the patriots who framed our Constitution 
vainly imagined that they had made a frame of Government under which rebellion and revolu- 
tion would be impossible. Not so, according to the doctrine <>r my distinguished adversary. 
He argues that whenever an unconstitutional law is passed, it is revolution, and anarchy 

follows, and war is the just Consequence. If that be correct doctrine, pray what i- the USC "t 

the Supreme Court ? It has no place in his theory of our Government. My friend has put 
a String of questions to me, and he will allow me to put one to him : According to his theory. 
what is the use of the Supreme Court of the United states, and why have we provided b>r elec- 
tions at inters als. m no case greater than four years '.' 1 .-ay that the Cramers ei' the Constitution 
never dreamed that a doctrine such as that announced by him would be propounded by any 



8 

party in the country. They gave the people frequent elections, an ample and beneficent 
judicial system, and provided methods by which the Constitution could be peaceably amended, 
and supposed that they had made the internal peace of the country enduring as its mountains. 
The thought of secession, rebellion or revolution never disturbed them. John C. Calhoun, in 
1847, introduced it into the Senate of the United States, embodied in certain resolutions, which 
Col. Benton moved at once to lay on the table. Calhoun looked at him with that calm eye of 
his, and said : " I am happy to hear from the gentleman ; I shall know where to find him." 
"Yes, sir," replied Old Bullion, "you may always know where to find me. You will always 
find me on the side of my country. I am glad you-know it, sir." 

In 1848 the Democratic Convention assembled at Baltimore, and I went there to help make 
the nominee. I saw Wm. L. Yancey, Calhoun's ablest disciple, arise in that Convention and 
submit to its consideration Mr. Calhoun's dogma, which had been so promptly tallied at the 
previous session of the Senate. I saw the question brought to a vote in that grand Democratic 
Convention, which embraced delegates from every SouthenflState — South Carolina, Mississippi, 
Arkansas, Georgia, and all the rest; yet among them all there were but 36 Southern men to 
vote for the doctrine which my friend propounds as the doctrine of the Democratic party 
to-day, to wit : that the Constitution of the United States contains the seeds of its own 
destruction ; and that any State that may believe an act to be unconstitutional need not wait 
till the Supreme Court has passed upon the question, but may go out of the Union, and may 
rob you of your interests under the Homestead Law, and under the Constitution of the United 
States, which gives you citizenship in each and every State. 

The despised and rejected heresy of 1847-8 is the ruling doctrine of the Democratic party 
to-day, and when, in the Chicago Convention, they pledge themselves with " unswerving fidelity 
to the Union under the Constitution," they avow to all knowing men just that doctrine. They 
declare that "in the future, as in the past" (mark you, as in the past), "we will adhere with 
unswerving fidelity to the Union under the Constitution, as the only solid foundation of our 
strength, security, and happiness as a people, and as a framework of government equally 
conducive to the welfare and prosperity of all the States, both Northern and Southern." 
Now, we of the Administration party are for the Union unconditionally until this war be 
terminated ; and then, if any man has violated the Constitution, we will take him before the 
courts of the land, and punish him. But while there is war-making upon us, our great object 
is to maintain our country; for it is no odds what the Constitution is, if we have no country 
for the Constitution to operate upon. Therefore, in order to have the benefit of the Consti- 
tution, we mean to maintain the integrity of the country, that our posterity, dwelling in that 
country, shall enjoy the benefit of the Constitution. 

I have shown you, fellow citizens, that James Buchanan, and John B. Floyd, and Howell 
Cobb, and Isaac Toucey, and Jeremiah S. Black talked about "the Union under the Consti- 
tution ;" they had sworn, all of them, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. I have 
read you Mr. Buchanan's reasoning as to what are the powers of the government under the 
Constitution. I have read you his attorney-general's opinion on that subject, and thus shown 
you that the phrase " the Union under the Constitution" means the Constitution as the Demo- 
cratic party understand it; that is, with the right of secession in it. Is it not so ? Do they 
mean "the Union under the Constitution," as Webster understood it, as Clay understood it, 
as Jackson and his cabinet understood it— the Union with vital power in the Constitution to 
defend the Constitution and maintain the Union? or do they mean "the Union under the 
Constitution" as it was understood by James Buchanan, and Howell Cobb, and Jeremiah S. 
Black, and John 13. Floyd, and Isaac Toucey, and as it is understood by my competitor here, 
who has no fault to find with Mr. Buchanan's Administration? If they mean "the Union 
under the Constitution," as they understood it, why shall they make war now to maintain 
what they would not make war to keep ? Why shall they not give back to the rebels what 
they regard as their territory ? Did they not give them arms to defend it ? Did they not 
give them a navy to defend it ? Did they not surrender to them the United States army, 
lest it might be used to deprive them of that territory? Did they not strip you of arms, 
ammunition, soldiers, and ships ? Why will they not, then, adhere in the future to the same 
policy which they practised in 18G0, let the whole thing go, and declare that the Constitution 
is a rope of sand ? 

When my distinguished friend shall have answered my questions as to when the Constitu- 
tion was so amended that its powers were restricted to the territ.orv lvino- nm-tli nf M^rior,ri ) 
Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri, I will proceec LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 3 
done me the honor to propound to me. 'Il'lill 1 ! Il'l 111 1 llillll I II I : ll I 'I I II 

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